Authorities in Beijing have barred two executives from a Singapore-based AI firm from leaving China amid a review of the company’s $2 billion acquisition by U.S. social media giant Meta, according to a report by the Financial Times on Wednesday.
Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao — the CEO and chief scientist, respectively, of Manus — were summoned to Beijing this month and questioned over a possible violation of foreign direct investment reporting rules related to the acquisition before being told they could not leave the country, the report said.
The Chinese entrepreneurs founded the company in China but relocated it to Singapore last year before it was acquired by Meta in December — the latest in a string of multibillion-dollar deals as U.S. tech companies race to snap up promising artificial intelligence firms.
Manus is a leading start-up in the fledgling field of AI “agents,” designed to carry out complex tasks beyond the capabilities of chatbots, including reading and writing files on a user’s computer, building apps and analyzing large datasets. China’s Ministry of Commerce in January launched an investigation into the acquisition, though it has not released details of how the deal may have violated Chinese laws.
Both China and the United States have sought to prevent homegrown AI talent and companies from migrating to each other’s markets amid fierce competition to dominate the next generation of AI technology. However, this is the first time Beijing has used exit bans on executives as part of an investigation to stymie a multibillion-dollar deal with a U.S. tech firm.
Manus did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Meta did not respond to questions about the Manus executives but said of the Chinese investigation that “the transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry.”
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Beijing is moving to tighten control over the country’s private AI industry. At its top annual political meeting this month, officials outlined a five-year plan that includes strengthening ties between private tech firms and the military, pledging to “win the battle for core technologies” amid competition with the U.S.
Silicon Valley’s dominance in AI has been due in large part to attracting talented researchers from China and other countries — a practice imperiled by the Trump administration’s policies restricting immigration and anti-China rhetoric. President Donald Trump’s right-wing tech donors have advocated for more investment in AI infrastructure and fewer rules on start-ups by framing Chinese advances in the sector as a threat to America’s technological dominance.
Meta’s acquisition of Manus is among the tech giant’s dramatic moves to try to catch up to its competitors in generative AI, including buying up hot start-ups, offering eye-popping salaries to AI researchers, repeated internal restructuring and swapping out executives.
Six months before purchasing Manus, Meta paid nearly $15 billion for a 49 percent stake in the data labeling company Scale AI, installing its CEO, Alexandr Wang, as head of Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs research division. In December, Wang said on X that Meta was acquiring Manus and that its “world class” 100-person team in Singapore would join the U.S. tech giant’s rapidly expanding AI lab in the city.
Manus’s main product is a personal AI agent, a program that can take actions on a person’s behalf, including by installing and operating other software. Interest in AI agents has spiked since Manus’s acquisition. OpenAI acquired the AI agent start-up OpenClaw in February, and earlier this month, Meta acquired Moltbook, a social network for AI agents, installing the start-up’s co-founders in Superintelligence Labs.
It is unclear how China’s restrictions on the Manus executives will affect the firm’s operations. In December, Meta said it planned to maintain the Manus service while integrating the program into other products.
Under an exit ban in China, individuals are barred indefinitely from leaving the country, though they are generally free to move within its borders. Beijing frequently uses such bans against Chinese citizens returning from abroad, restricting their departure during active investigations, though critics say the measures are also deployed for political purposes.
Exit bans have also targeted family members of those under investigation, as well as human rights lawyers and religious figures. Unlike court-imposed travel restrictions in the United States, exit bans in China require only a low evidentiary threshold and can be imposed on individuals named in civil or commercial disputes.
Last year, China imposed exit bans on a Chinese American man working for the U.S. Commerce Department and an Atlanta-based Wells Fargo employee.
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